An Archaeology of Landscapes: Perspectives and Directions

This review calls for the definition of a landscape approach in archaeology. After tracing the development of the landscape idea over its history in the social sciences and examining the compatibility between this concept and traditional archaeological practice, we suggest that archaeology is particularly well suited among the social sciences for defining and applying a landscape approach. If archaeologists are to use the landscape paradigm as a pattern which connects human behavior with particular places and times, however, we need a common terminology and methodology to build a construct paradigm. We suggest that settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes will contribute toward the definition of such a broadly encompassing paradigm that also will facilitate dialogue between archaeologists and traditional communities.     

Archaeology, History, and Historical Archaeology in South America

This paper discusses the relationship between history and archaeology in general, their common concerns and links with historical archaeology. It deals with the development of historical archaeology in three related South American countries, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and pays attention to recent trends in the theory and practice of the discipline in the area.     

Archaeologies of Aspiration: Historical Archaeology in Rural Central Sicily

Using material from a survey and excavation project in central Sicily, this paper discusses the complexities of understanding the material effects and archival data related primarily to nineteenth- and twentieth-century rural landscapes. Although it is possible to frame the relevant processes in terms of resistance and capitalist relations, the authors suggest that to understand this material within its historical context, it is necessary to identify aspirations and values related to the various overlapping as well as competing social groups with interests in the countryside, including large land-owners and institutions, leaseholders and their associates, small landholders and landless peasants.     

历史事实:史学家建构过去的图景

中外历史哲学界对“历史事实”存在严重的争论,主要问题是关于历史事实的应用范围与含义上的分歧。其实,“历史事实”只能限制在历史认识论的范围内才有意义,而历史事实与史料中的事实也不能等同。从历史学家与“历史事实”的关系来看,历史事实依历史学家的存在而存在,“历史事实”是史学家建立的关于过去的图景,是一个关于过去历史实际的知识体系。     

A Brief Overview of the Evolution of Historical Archaeology in Argentina

This introductory chapter presents a brief overview of the evolution of Argentine historical archaeology as a scientific discipline, starting from the first pioneering work until its consolidation and future prospects. It also includes a summary of each of the paper presented.     

Historical Archaeology as Modern-World Archaeology in Argentina

Historical archaeology has grown at a remarkable pace in the last decade. South America has seen a major growth in historical archaeology, with archaeologists in Argentina playing a large role in the maturation of the discipline on the continent. Much of this archaeology can be characterized as “modern-world archaeology” because of the archaeologists’ interest in issues relevant to post-Columbian cultural history.     

Zooarchaeology and Historical Archaeology: Progress and Prospects

This review assesses the development and current status of zooarchaeological research in historical archaeology. Analytical issues in recovery, identification, quantification and interpretation are discussed with particular reference to assemblages from historical sites. The results section summarizes the substantive contributions zooarchaeological studies of historical assemblages have made to our understanding of past diet, food production systems, social and cultural variation, and archaeological interpretations. The last four decades of research has provided a strong basis for future analyses that draw together diverse strands of zooarchaeological, historical, scientific, and anthropological evidence.     

Professionalism in Historical Archaeology

As historical archaeology expands across the globe, issues over the nature of professionalism are sure to arise with greater frequency. In this essay, I explore the subject of professionalism in historical archaeology and offer a few personal comments and observations on this important subject. For me, personal integrity can play a huge role in furthering the cause of archaeology among an often-uninterested public.     

Historical Archaeology and the Slave Ship

This introduction explores the relationship between maritime archaeology and the historical archaeology of the African Diaspora, and discusses the structure and content of this special issue of IJHA, which marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade in 2007.     

Scottish Historical Archaeology: International Agendas and Local Politics

Historical archaeology as practiced in Scotland is divergent from the mainstream tradition of historical archaeology/post-medieval archaeology that dominates North America and the English-speaking world. Cultural and historical forces have shaped an historical archaeology with a deeper time depth, which extends back into the Middle Ages. It also focuses on different subjects reflecting the political concerns associated with Scottish national identity. Examples drawn from Glasgow’s history are used to illustrate the distinctiveness of the Scottish tradition and how it is evolving. I argue that one of its strengths of Scottish historical archaeology is that it provides a corrective contrast to the subjects and approaches which dominate historical archaeology in the English-speaking world.     

Toward a Collective Historical Archaeology

In this paper, I begin with ideas of difference and try to weave together aspects of our disciplinary structure, contemporary theoretical critique, and research agendas to show how our emphasis on difference, multiplicity, and individual identity makes it difficult to comprehend all that we share and constrains our political action to only local concerns. Instead, the kind of archaeological research that I envision focuses on commonalities through questions of labor, class and capitalism geared toward developing an understanding of all that we as people share.     

Later Historical Archaeology in Iceland: A Review

This paper offers a general review of past and present archaeological work on the later historic period of Iceland, i.e. from the sixteenth century to the present day. Introduced by a brief sketch of the nature of Iceland??s history and archaeology, a chronological approach is taken in presenting previous and current research on sites and material of the later historic period. Starting in the mid-twentieth century, with minor work focused on a single ordinary farmstead, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed a growth of excavations largely on elite residences. Since the 1990s and into the present, such a focus has continued while also seeing a rise in development-led projects. Despite this, lack of publication or even general discussion of the archaeology of this period dominates the field in Iceland, problems which are only now being addressed.     

Historical Archaeology and the Recent Urban Past

This paper examines the ways in which international historical archaeologists have explored the recent past, in an effort to inform and contribute to contemporary debates about social identity and social inclusion. It is argued that the archaeology of the mundane and everyday can contribute to contemporary culture by creating a sense of community and developing social cohesion. Emphasis is placed upon the archaeology of the recent urban past and case studies are presented from New York, Sydney and Cape Town. The paper concludes that the study of the materiality of urban social life offers a powerful research tool for social scientists, and that archaeologists and heritage interpreters should make greater use of this form of evidence within the context of early 21st‐century urban regeneration schemes in the UK.     

Household Archaeology in Polynesia: Historical Context and New Directions

This review highlights archaeological investigations of precontact and historic house sites in Polynesia, a region noted for its diversity of chiefdoms in terms of scale and elaboration. Anthropological and historical perceptions of the Polynesian household have shifted over time, influencing the ways in which the household has been defined in archaeology. Early research emphasized houses as a unit of study within settlement pattern archaeology and as a means of delineating formal variability between sites and communities. Current studies stress a more holistic view of the household as a nexus of economic, social, and ritual activities. Diverse theoretical perspectives, such as the analytical concept of house societies, feminist archaeologies, landscape approaches, and agent-based models, have led to new archaeological approaches engaged with both the material and the nonmaterial aspects of the house and, in particular, how social relations structure the household. Current prominent themes include functional identification of house sites, understanding social variability, articulation of the household with the community, and comparative analyses of social complexity.     

Mobile Humanity: The Delocalization of Anthropological Research

Anthropological research in recent decades has become increasingly multi-sited, envisioning the local as an iteration of world-systemic processes, and following the movement of people, things and ideas across the typical boundaries of sites. This review essay examines four edited volumes concerned with such mobility and dislocation. The cultural anthropological volumes engage with the strengths and perceived weaknesses of multi-sited ethnography, the advantages of following people and themes across space, and the definition of sites by topic rather than by place. The archaeological collections move beyond typologies that have constrained archaeological investigations of movement through the study of the material practices that constituted social landscapes of mobile and settled peoples. Although the reviewed volumes offer important methodological distinctions and theoretical engagements, all four provide numerous ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological views of the delocalization of anthropological research, including claims for the utility of collaborative partnerships, the following of paths across space and time, and the reconsideration of the fixity and centrality of contemporary, historic and prehistoric places.     

Scale Locality and the Caribbean Historical Archaeology

Historical archaeologists have become increasingly concerned with regional analysis focusing on the interconnections between different archaeological sites in order to develop a better sense of social relations. This development is in part due to the realization of many years of research and subsequent topical and theoretical syntheses. It also reflects a shifting concern in research towards fluidity of landscape and translocality (Hicks in World Archaeol 37:373–391, 2005; Lightfoot K (2005). University of California, Berkeley; Orser CE Jr (1996) A historical archaeology of the modern world. Plenum, New York; Wilkie LA, Farnsworth P (2005) Sampling many pots: an archaeology of memory and tradition at a Bahamian Plantation. University Press of Florida, Gainesville). The Caribbean as a world area highlights the need for broader regional analyses where tensions between local specificities and global/translocal processes are mediated. These tensions have been explored through discussions of identity, agency, colonialism and political economy. In this volume we explore the utility of scale of analysis in the framing of colonial landscapes between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in the Caribbean. Contributors to this volume have concentrated on the ways in which scale as a concept is explicitly analyzed or implicitly employed to shape how we as archaeologists focus on topics associated with the African Diaspora in the Caribbean to draw out narratives of everyday life.     

Going Places: The Historical Archaeology of Travel and Tourism

This paper briefly introduces the topics of tourism, consumption, and heritage management considered in this special issue. Contributors to the special issue focus on tourism within nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and its connections to industrial capitalism and the creation of a culture of consumption. These issues are addressed in case studies of tourist sites, including archaeological sites.     

Context and Interpretation: An Archaeology of Cultural Production

This paper examines the construction of modern-world contexts in historical archaeology. To help draw out and understand the social and cultural contexts of capitalism, colonialism, and modernity, and how they may be materially understood, an explanation of the German history of everyday life school (Alltagsgeschichte) is presented. In this approach, the objects of historical study become the everyday cultural interpretations of past people and how these interpretations actively produced and reproduced cultures. This approach is illustrated by a landscape archaeology of the Bordley–Randall site in Annapolis, Maryland.